I don’t do Facebook as a rule – life just too busy, but here’s the deal, if you join or already have a Facebook account, and join this Facebook group you’ll get 10 Free Shares of Mr Hyperlink empire group of websites.
Have a read of the information on the Facebook site.
Money for nothing?
What a day!, Still Broadband issues – worse than ever, Hard Drive RMAs, Flash Failures, well at least I finally got the Super Talent hardware encryption working on the PICO-C 32GB with help from Super Talent Support, a new update was required. Thanks to Super Talent for respoding so quickly on this one! More than can be said, for one ISP!
Securelock software after password entered correctly AES Secure Unlocked for use
Securelock software, after logging out or USB flash drive inserted into computer, AES Secure area locked
and at last British Telecom Wholesale have removed the bloody CAP from our broadband! Just have to work out why, it was done in the first place!
I received a sample Super Talent Pico C 32GB flash drive today (Model STU32GPCGE).
Nice Packaging
and once it’s opened it reveals
Super Talent Pico C Gold 32GB Flash Drive inside
Flash drive accessories, a chain and security bracelet!
it's tiny!
You can see by the scale of the 50 pence coin, that this flash drive is tiny, I understand why it comes with a chain and security bracelet, it’s tiny, and easily lost and yes that’s 24 karat gold!
This flash drive supports seamless hardware AES encryption of data on the flash drive, and since a few of my clients are investigating and trialing flash drive encryption and hard disk encryption for laptops it seemed the ideal choice, despite the bling!
The only problem is, when trying to setup the hardware encryption using a program called Securelock, this occurs!
Whoops! Faulty!
East Riding of Yorkshire, these dangerous potholes are for you to fix, please follow me on twitter you have been dully notified of their existence. or start here at No.1 (there are 28 to fix). (there are two 27s!)
Dangerous Pothole No.1 at +53° 57' 39.44", -0° 47' 0.21"
To give you an idea of the scale of this pothole, that silver disc is a hard drive platter, with a diameter of 3.5 inches, that gets lost in this pot hole.
I don’t bother security erasing broken hard drives to DOD standards, I take them apart, and use the disks as bird scarers for the allotment, or reflective surfaces in case I get stuck on a desert island to signal passing ships or aircraft! Always handy to have one in your rucksac, just in case, Be Prepared! Handy toys for cats as well!
old hard disc before platters removed
hard disc drive platters removed
Winchester Disk Drive, Hard disk drive, Hard disc drive, HDD or ‘that big box under the desk‘ (which is the answer I often get!) or I’ve got 500GB of memory or is that disk! I don’t know!
it’s what makes most computers go, most of the time, and if they go bad or stop working, so does your computer usually!
A number of years ago (7 years), I always used Western Digital hard disk drives (HDDs) but after a spate of failures with the new (at the time) WDC WD1200JB, the JB features a 7200 RPM spindle speed coupled with three 40 GB platters. The JB’s key feature, is its 8-meg buffer, four times that of competing drives at the time. An ATA-standard 3-year warranty backs the drive.
But after many of these failed, I decided to switch to Seagate Technology, backed by a 5 Year Warranty, and hard drive manufacturer I’d not used for many years.
The hard drive manufaturer market has certainly got smaller over the last 20 years, many names have disappeared, Connor, DEC, Fujitsu, IBM, Maxtor, Miniscribe and Quantum have disappeared. Quantum acquired DEC, Maxtor acquired Miniscribe and Quantum HDD, Seagate acquired Connor and Maxtor, Hitachi acquired IBM HDD, Toshiba acquired Fujitsu HDD, Western Digital acquired Tandon HDD.
So that leaves us with
So, we still have plenty of HDD manufaturers to choose from!
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500Gbytes ST3500320AS and Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black WD1001FALS
But for me, I’ve decided to go back to purchasing Western Digital Black Drives for the moment, and spread the risk between Seagate for the NASes and Western Digital Black for the workstations!
My broadband has been all over the place again recently, back in March Eclipse my ISP, suggested they would move my broadband line onto a different line card/circuit in the exchange, the Technical Support Engineer’s never really gave away anything tecnical as to what they are actually doing. But today after another discussion it now becomes clear that before I was on a Tiscali LLU circuit, I suspect but I cannot confirm, this, I was moved to this in January 2009, when all the issues started (maybe), although now being moved to a BT circuit, the same issues occurs, extreme hot or cold, the Signal-to-noise ratio rises, and the sync speed drops, and hence throughput is very very slow. Today was the final straw, my broadband speed was as follows at 15:30 GMT. I was told, that because my sync speed had dropped the Profile on the line was slow, and I would have to wait 72 hours before it would speed-up!
Router is reporting this G.DMT SHOWTIME 448000 192000 14.5 49.0
and then later it gets worse…
I’ve not done anything, I’ve just returned from a Parish Council Meeting, and now the speed is backup to 2.2 – 2.4MB/s, this is the fastest it’s ever been, apart from that strange blip and changeover!
I put this here, so I can find it later, and refer Eclipse and BT to it! (it’s there test results!)
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 600-2500 Kbps.
I’ve been suffering a spate of Gremlin attacks…
I’ve repaired the TiVo, it needed a new power supply, the Alba STB went in the bin, and I’ve ordered new hard disks for my workstation and NAS.
Yesterday we dug out a casualty of the hard winter frosts we had, where the ground remained frosted for many weeks, lots of garden Hebe’s around this area have died in the area due to the hard winter frosts. Lindsey was thinking of replacing it anyway, because it had grown too large and straggly.
Dead Hebe, frost damage
After removing the dead Hebe
A friend of mine is moving house in a few months, and has decided not to take vintage computers he’s collected over many years, and he was going to scrap them and take them down the skip, unless homes were found. So I collect a car load of vintage stuff
BBC Micros, BBC Masters, Telextet, Prestel and 6502 2nd Processors
I collected the following:-
Teletext, Prestel and Second Processor for BBC Micro
Prestel Adaptor
6502 Second Processor
Teletext Adaptor
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